Working as a professional geek.

It has been quite a while since my last entry and it really has just been due to laziness on my part. I have typed up many entries for this blog but have just simply been too lazy to edit and post them. I ended my first full year of higher education about five weeks ago and immediately after that I took a trip. My trip, though overdue, was kept short because my job had told me to "be back by Tuesday". Well long story short I didn't actually work until Thursday... Two and a half weeks later. If I had known this while on my trip I could have done so much more with my free time. Instead I spent my time watching TOS of Star Trek and perfecting my game at table tennis. As I had gotten out of school weeks before any of my friends, in either college or HS, I quite literally had nothing to do. I wrote another entry about my two weeks of boredom, but this will most likely get posted first. 

Anywho, I finally started work for my company after two weeks. First off I should give some back-story/explanation as to what it is that I do. Summer after my Senior year of HS I started this job as it payed extremely well for the amount of effort the employee must put in. My technical position is that I hold a stop/slow paddle for a control safety company in road construction. Even though this is what I was initially hired for last summer, I had told the company up front that I was only working for three months until school started. Because of this I got to go and do special projects and travel around the state for free. This was all fine and dandy as I love getting paid good money to simply drive to a project, on company dime, and then return the next day. I had no permanent project last summer and I liked it that way. 

This summer, however, was a different story. Due to the economy my company had laid off about half of their employees during the winter. Because I had been such an exemplary worker last summer they were still eager to hire me back on. I should explain that most of their employees were ex-cons and other such types to the point where I, who am nothing too special, was considered a diamond of a find as far as my company was concerned... getting back on track now. I was hired back on but didn't work for two weeks straight. 

Once I had work they put me permanently on a project. I like mixing it up as much as possible so being stuck on the same road for three months didn't sound very appealing to me, but nonetheless I trudged on. I was situated on the south side of the project right around a corner so none of the other workers could see me. The road was also pretty scarce as far as vehicular numberage goes. This was great because I listen to my iPod all day on the job and like to punch-dance my rage as much as possible. Aside from music I also have every Harry Potter book on tape and enjoy acting out scenes as they are read to me. 

Now at this point you must be thinking, "This job sounds like an absolute delight", but trust me it isn't all peaches and unicorn fluff. I have to leave my house at 5:30 am to get to work, and I return around 8:30. I literally got home, ate dinner, made my lunch for the next day, and then went to sleep so it could all repeat. The only day off I got was Sunday and I usually just went to church and then slept the rest of the day. The hours were plenty, but at some point 60 hour weeks are just too much. Plus being in the sun literally from dawn till dusk is EXTREMELY draining. 

Back to the plot at hand. I love my Harry Potter time dearly and getting to scare passing cars by shooting stunning spells is always fun. I will confess that I am truly in love with the HP series. I read through the entire series at least once a year, and listen through it about three times a year. Over all I would guess I have gone through all seven books about 20 times in my life and can quote a good portion of most the books by heart. As far as getting to listen to the tales and woes of Harry, Ron, and Hermione,  I do love that part of the job. Unfortunately there is no amount of Firebolts or Nimbus 2000s that can keep me content when it gets around 5:00 in the afternoon and I am just dead tired. So at that point I just try to stay awake by having enormous amounts of fun. Here is a list of things I would do to entertain myself.

-Shout "'ello Govna" to passing cars.

-Pretend to be a dinosaur.

-Engage in long conversations about the differences between river and sea otters with the front car in my stopped pack. (This one rarely went well).

-See how many times I could flip my walky-talky without dropping it. Record: 482 flips

-Whenever I would talk on the radio I would strain my voice in different ways to convey opposing messages. I.e. I would say "received and sending" as though I were an Australasian man who was very anxious about an unforeseen doom.

-When cars were stopped I would just stare at them and softly sing the Poke'mon theme music.

-Make approaching cars think I was a very talented tap-dancer. Note: I am NOT a tap-dancer.

... As time, and days, wore on my stunts grew increasingly strange and absurd. Luckily no one reported me to the supervisor. Although as a non-smoking, non-alcoholic flagger I don't think they would have been mad at all considering that, unlike my other flaggers, I don't show up to work drunk.

During my two weeks of boredom I had started to apply at other places as a last-ditch effort. about three weeks after I finally got work with my traffic job I ended it with the company on very good terms. I now work a simply perfect job at a tee-shirt shop on Main St. were I get to sell people tee-shirts while impersonating a British person. I always try to make the most fun out of everything I do, which usually lands me with almost everyone thinking I am very strange indeed... Oh well, that's life I guess.

Live long, and Prosper,

Benjamin Renfro.